Kate Wilhelm - Let the Fire Fall

“God knows they flock to the woods in droves during vacations,” Winifred said. “Those who can afford it anyway.”

“Sure. They go to cities that are on the edge of the woods, with paved trails weaving in and out of the trees, with nothing growing along the trails on the floor of the woods because they have picked it all clean. Turn one of them loose fifty miles from his city, and he would probably die.”

Lorna looked at him then and said bitterly, “Are you pretending that we aren’t going to die in the woods?”

“We might,” Blake said easily. “I guarantee nothing. But everyone dies sooner or later, somewhere. Why not here in the woods rather than back in the camp?”

Lorna shivered. “I’m freezing. At least back there I was warm and full. Why don’t you ask me if I knew they were using me to lead them to you? Why don’t you ask if I still believe in Obie Cox and his Voice of God Church?”

Winifred sighed in satisfaction.

Blake laughed. “Lorna, I remember you as a pretty bratty kid, always talking, talking, full of importance, demanding attention. I thought you had reformed.”

It was teasing, but with such good humor that even Lorna grinned. “I give,” she said suddenly. “I’m sorry, Blake. I was stupid, stubborn. I should have known what the whole act was about, but I didn’t. When I saw you on New Year’s. Eve… I never had been so surprised in my life. Then they were there and I understood all of it all at once. I was so miserable. I wished they would simply shoot me, or hit me harder than they did, or “Something.”

“And the Church?” Winifred asked.

“Oh, you know. You told me all about it. I didn’t believe you. I went to the Listener’s Booth and found myself spilling everything. I didn’t want to. I really’ thought I wouldn’t, but there it all came….”

“Honey, I told you, they use a hypnotic gas in those damn tapers of theirs. You couldn’t help it.”

Blake laughed again, a happy, boyish sound. “Wait until they use the fake wine along with the tapers,” he said finally. “It’s an antidote.”

They all laughed almost hysterically, and afterward Lorna cracked nuts with gusto. They slept close together for warmth, and when Lorna awakened once during the night listening to a strange noise, she found that Blake’s arms were about her, her cheek against his chest. She fell asleep again instantly.

Blake paced them and demanded more of them than they would have thought they could give. But they were happy, and the days continued fairly mild. They had no more rain until the ninth day. They spent the entire day under a rock that formed a ledge over their heads. Winifred caught Blake eyeing her several times, and each time, she straightened up consciously, only to slump again as soon as he looked away. He had her lie down and he ran his hands over her back later in the day, pressing gently here and there. She relaxed under his hands and the pain that had tormented her was eased, but she knew that she could not hike through the mountains for the next six or eight weeks, the time he said it would take to get to a cabin in Pennsylvania.

That night Blake left them. Lorna woke to find him gone. She touched Winifred lightly on the arm and two women sat shivering for the next two hours until they heard the snort of a horse close by. Lorna screamed.

“It’s all right,” Blake’s voice called softly.

They could see nothing, but presently he was there with them again. “I thought we were fairly near a Cherokee village that I visited once,” he said. “I paid a visit to the chief and he loaned me a couple of horses. I’m going to leave you both with his people. They’ll take care of you.”

Over the morning fire Lorna protested. “I won’t stay,” she said. “I know I’ve been nothing but trouble, but I won’t stay here. I want to help you, Blake. You said Derek is with you, let me come too.”

Blake looked at her hard, then shrugged. He got the women up on the horses and led them through the trees. Lorna never had been on a horse before, and by the end of the first hour she was too sore to move.

“How did you get way over here in the middle of the night?” she asked Blake some time later. They were pausing briefly on a bluff, and in the distance they could see the gleam of white birch tents.

Blake shrugged. Winifred remembered the enlarged lungs and hearts of his people and knew that accounted for his stamina. She wished she shared it. She felt faint with fatigue.

They bypassed the tent village. Blake grinned and said, “That’s for the tourists. Show only. They don’t live like hat.” He continued to lead their horses, and finally they started down the cliffs. Suddenly, rounding a bend, they came within sight of the village. It was so well hidden that the appearance of the two dozen small cottages was almost like a conjurer’s trick. There were neat fields, not plowed yet, standing green with a winter wheat crop, and a windmill, and a group of children playing with a ball. It was a scene of timeless simplicity.

Chief Whitehorse met them. A tall strong man dressed in Levis and a plaid shirt, he greeted them warmly. “Dr. Harvey, you are welcome to be our guest as long as you like. We are very happy to receive you.” He clasped her hand. His knowing gaze passed from Lorna to Blake and there was a smile crinkling the skin about his eyes. “Miss Daniels, if you change your mind, please accept our hospitality, such as it is.”

Breakfast was ready, he told them. Coffee, eggs, bacon, fried potatoes, corn bread, wild honey…. Over coffee he explained that no outsider had stumbled across their village for forty years. Winifred asked mildly how Blake had found them, and he smiled and said that Blake was their brother. “We adopted him in order to keep our record clean,” the chief said.

The next day Blake and Lorna left again, this time on horseback, accompanied by one of Chief Whitehorse’s sons, who would ride with them for two days, and bring back the horses then.

Winifred watched them out of sight with tears on her cheeks. The chief stood silently by her side until she turned toward him. Then he said, “He has friends, many, many friends. If he has need of them they will materialize everywhere around him. He is a great chief among men and beasts.” His sharp eyes held hers and he added, “He is the alien, isn’t he?” Winifred nodded. “Yes, I suspected as much years ago when he came to us as a boy. Come now, Dr. Harvey, and let me explain to you the psychology of the tourists who want to believe that dried corn silk glued to pigskin and enclosed in duralite blocks are actually scalp locks for which they are willing to give much, much money.”

Bookworld , Nov. 1993

Today the N. Y. Supreme Court upheld the decision handed down by the lower court granting the Voice of God Church on injunction against the North American Publishing Corporation, its president, Orson Beamish, and writer Newell Oates, who are ordered to cease and desist the distribution of Oates’s latest book, The Paranoid Church. Meanwhile the plunder and arson of those bookstores and department stores where the book has been on display continue….

Washington Post , Nov. 1994

Today the CDL, Committee for Decent literature, received the official recognition and official status that it has been seeking for over a quarter of a century. Miss Grace Livingstone, retired in 1973 after teaching high school literature for twenty years, was named director of the department, which will operate under the auspices of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. Miss Livingstone said that her department immediately will start a review of all materials in public schools, libraries, for sale in public places, or advertised In any media that is easily accessible to the public as a whole. A board of review, already formed, will then examine any questionable material and decide whether or not it is in the public. interest to permit it to remain where it is accessible to young, developing minds, she stated.